Article supporting racks are commonly provided by the use of relatively rigid sheets of pegboard or the like perforated in a regular grid-like pattern so that supporting hangers in the form of hooks or brackets may be secured in various locations on the board by engaging an anchoring element of the hanger with a selected perforation in the board. Hangers for such use with pegboard take many different forms and shapes which are determined primarily by the nature of the articles that are to be supported thereby. Some of the most stable configurations are of the type where a rigid, vertical back plate having a hook for insertion within openings in the pegboard support horizontally extending article-supporting members. Within that broad description, article supporting members having a multi-hook back plate are even more rigid. For example, a dual-hook back plate having side by side hook members provide improved stability against horizontally applied forces being placed upon the load bearing member while dual-hook back plates having a first hook located above the second improves the stability of the assembly for the top hook provides a load bearing member for those items placed upon the hanger, while the lower hook helps to prevent the hanger assembly from being inadvertently lifted from the pegboard by an upward force. A four hook assembly combines both the horizontal and vertical stability of each type of dual-hook back plate hanger.
Although a hooked back plate support is most rigid and a multi-hook support provides an extended degree of stability for pegboard hangers, it was nevertheless found that such hangers would often times lift from the pegboard by someone accidentally disturbing the hangers. Many times store personnel which use such hangers to display merchandise would, upon lifting merchandise from the support, inadvertently lift the pegboard hanger causing the hooks to be lifted from the pegboard openings resulting in the entire hanger assembly falling from the pegboard support.
Others have, in the past, made various attempts to produce means for preventing pegboard hangers from being inadvertently removed from the pegboard backing. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,193,231 provides a storage device which is affixed to a vertical pegboard surface 11. The storage device is affixed by means of pins 14 and 18. As shown in FIGS. 6 and 7, the pins may consist of sectioned cylinders which provide a spring clipping action. This patent does not show separate stabilizer means which can be used in conjunction with presently existing pegboard hangers, although the need for some type of stabilization between hangers and pegboards was well recognized. A similar disclosure can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,452,954 which, again, utilizes a split peg spring action to stabilize the pegboard hanger. U.S. Pat. No. 3,037,732 does show a stabilizer for pegboard hangers which can be used on existing hangers as a means of positively stabilizing the devices. The present invention, however, is considered to be a distinct improvement over the device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,037,732 for that device, unlike the present invention which will be described hereinafter, has no positive locating means for lining up the stabilizer with a pegboard opening, requires two hands to remove the stabilizer from the pegboard, is of such a configuration as to seriously damage the pegboard opening when the stabilizer is repetitively inserted and removed and prevents the direct frontal insertion and removal of the hanger onto and from the pegboard. This latter point becomes important when using hangers of extended length, i.e., 4 inches or more, under an existing shelf or when articles are hanging above.
The stabilizing means of the present invention is capable of being used with single or multi-hook back plate hangers which have current widespread acceptance. Thus, the stabilizer of the present invention is capable of being readily adapted to currently available hanger devices. By contrast, a stabilizer is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 3,640,497, which although presenting a stabilizing means superior to others presented in the prior art, is incapable of being adapted to a dual-hook back plate device and is extremely complex as compared to the present invention.